Cromwell Valley Park HawkWatch  - Thursday, 9/18/08

One of our best days at CVP.  Beginning at 10:45 am we saw kettle after kettle of Broad-winged Hawks form and quickly move south. The largest group in the morning was 89 hawks.  Between noon and 2:00 pm there was a bit of a lull. Then it began again. At 2:10 we saw a stream of 240 BWs. Over a dozen more smaller kettles were seen over the next 3 hours. Marty Miller and Mark Miller saw a bunch descend into woods nearby just after 6:00pm, so we may get some close birds leaving their roosts on Friday morning.

Kevin Graff spent half of the day with us before going to his old BACKYARD HAWKWATCH near Belair Rd.  He may have seen more BWs than we did since most of our sightings were off in his direction.

As usual, most of the birds seen today were very high and difficult to spot, and we would have missed them if not for the careful scanning of our observers.  THANKS TO EVERYONE!!



CVP HawkWatch Totals  -  9/18/08 - 8:00 am until 6:15 pm - 7 observers at various times

Broad-winged Hawk - 2,186
Sharp-shinned Hawk - 41
Osprey - 12
Am. Kestrel - 7
Merlin - 1 
N.Harrier - 4

Jim Meyers
Parkville Md.